Home Entertainment Arnold Schwarzenegger talks EXPENDABLES and THE TOMB

Arnold Schwarzenegger talks EXPENDABLES and THE TOMB

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I was greatly saddened when Arhnuld announced a few years back that he was done with movies, so that he could concentrate on his political quest of turning the Arnie run future-America from Demolition Man into a reality. Who else was going to deliver cheesy one-liners from around a clenched cigar while flexing his pectorals for no reason whatsoever?

Luckily though, the Governator’s term in office has come to an end, and since then he has been hard at work at showing these girly “action heroes” of today how it should be done. And next on his ass-kicking agenda are a couple of films with his biggest old-school action star rival, Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone and Schwarzenegger teaming up has the magnitude of a De Niro/Pacino collaboration, only with lots more veins and unintelligible English, so it is surprising that took until 2010’s The Expendables for the pair to finally work together. This is something that was addressed at the TCA Press tour where Arnold was there to promote the 30 for 30 Shorts online documentary series about his time as a youth in the Austrian Army.

When asked about the fact that it took this long for them to team up, and now that it’s happened they’ve done 3 films (The Expendables, The Expendables 2 and The Tomb) in quick succession, Arnold had this to say:

We’re in love with each other.  What’s really weird about it is that, for 20 years, we have been trying to do that and people have looked for scripts, but there was always something off.  The script was not right or the studio was not as interested in it as we were, or he was in the middle of shooting or having a commitment for three other movies.  So, it just didn’t happen.  And then, one day, I was sitting at my hairdresser and Sly [Stallone] came up to me and said, “Oh, man, it would be so great, if you could just do a little something in my Expendables movie.”  I said, “The only way I can do anything for you is if I do it on the weekend, and not take away my work for the people.  They would get very upset, if they knew I was shooting on Thursday and Friday for The Expendables and not doing the people’s work.”  So he said, “We can arrange that.  Let me call your agent.”  I said, “You don’t have to call my agent.  I make the decisions.  I’m in.  We have to be able to do it on Saturday, for a few hours.  Whatever you can write up, I’m in.”  He said, “Well, I just want to talk about the fee.”  I said, “You don’t have to pay me.  I’m in!  I’ll do it for you.”  That’s what somewhat broke the ice.

And then, after the movie came out and he directed the scene that I did, and people laughed and liked the scene, he asked me, “Can you be a part of the second one, but instead of four hours, can you do four days?,” and I said yes.  I said, “Maybe next time, I’ll be there for four weeks, if this movie does well.”  I’ll work my way up to four months, which is the amount of time he usually spends on one of those movies.

And then, he had The Tomb, which we did together.  Again, he told Mark Canton, the producer, “I don’t want to do the movie without having Arnold as the partner.”  So, Mark Canton came to me, but I had another commitment, at that point.  I had to undo another commitment.  I read the script and it was a really terrific script, so I said, “Okay, I’ll do this.”  That’s how it happened.  I don’t know if there will be another movie that we do together, or if there will be 10 more.  We have no plan.  But, the way it looks right now, with the test scores the way that they are, The Expendables 2 is going to be a big hit.  It’s going to most likely be a bigger hit than the last one.  And then, he will probably come back and ask me again to be in the next movie.

This year’s Comic-Con panel for The Expendables 2 showed that they guys have some amazing chemistry together, throwing acidic and sometimes self effacing banter back and forth like a pair of life long friends, so I for one cannot wait to see more of their muscly antics together.

Last Updated: August 6, 2012

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